Stopping and Starting an Instance

You can stop and start an instance as needed to update software or resolve error conditions.

Stopping or Restarting an Instance From Within the Instance

In addition to using the API and Console, you can stop and restart instances using the commands available in the operating system when you are logged in to the instance. Stopping an instance from within the instance does not stop billing for that instance. If you stop an instance this way be sure to also stop it from the Console or API.

Required IAM Policy

To use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, you must be given the required type of access in a An IAM document that specifies who has what type of access to your resources. It is used in different ways: to mean an individual statement written in the policy language; to mean a collection of statements in a single, named "policy" document (which has an Oracle Cloud ID (OCID) assigned to it); and to mean the overall body of policies your organization uses to control access to resources. written by an administrator, whether you're using the Console or the REST API with an SDK, CLI, or other tool. If you try to perform an action and get a message that you don’t have permission or are unauthorized, confirm with your administrator the type of access you've been granted and which A collection of related resources that can be accessed only by certain groups that have been given permission by an administrator in your organization. you should work in.

For administrators: The policy in Let users launch instances includes the ability to stop or start an existing instance. If the specified group doesn't need to launch instances or attach volumes, you could simplify that policy to include only manage instance-family, and remove the statements involving volume-family and virtual-network-family.

When an underlying Oracle Cloud Infrastructure component needs to undergo maintenance, you are notified in advance of the impact to your VM instances. If your VM instances are scheduled for a maintenance reboot, you have the ability to pro-actively reboot, or stop and start your instances using the Console, API, or CLI at any time prior to the scheduled reboot. This allows you to control how and when your applications experience downtime.

To identify VM instances that can be pro-actively rebooted using the Console, check the Maintenance Reboot field for the instance. If the instance has a maintenance reboot scheduled and can be proactively rebooted, this field will display the date and start time for the reboot. To check this using the API, use the timeMaintenanceRebootDue field for the Instance. For VM instances with a boot volume, additional iSCSI block volume attachments, and a single VNIC, you can proceed to reboot, or stop and start the instance. If you have non-iSCSI (paravirtualized or emulated) block volume attachments or secondary VNICs, you need to first detach these resources before you reboot your instance.

When you reboot, or stop and start the instance, it will be migrated to a different physical VM host. Once the Maintenance Reboot field is blank, the instance will no longer be impacted by the maintenance event. If you choose not to reboot prior to the scheduled time, then Oracle Cloud Infrastructure will reboot and migrate your instances within a twenty-four hour period after the scheduled time.

To make it easier to locate and perform these actions on your VM instances, you can use Search with a predefined query to find all instances that have a maintenance reboot scheduled.

In the Console, if you are not already there, append "/a/query" to the end of your base Console URL. For example, https://console.us-ashburn-1.oraclecloud.com/a/query.

Click Select Sample Query, and then click Query for all instances which have an upcoming scheduled maintenance.

Note

The Maintenance Reboot field is currently supported on all standard VM instances running Linux-based operating systems. For VM instances running other operating systems, follow the instructions in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure maintenance notification email.

Using the Console

Open the navigation menu. Under Core Infrastructure, go to Compute and click Instances.

In the list of instances, find the instance you want to stop or start, and then click the instance name to display the instance details.

Click one of the following actions:

start

Restarts a stopped instance. After the instance is restarted, the Stop action is enabled.

stop

Shuts down the instance. After the instance is powered off, the Start action is enabled.

reboot

Shuts down the instance, and then restarts it.

Note

Resource Billing

For standard VM and BM instances, stopping an instance pauses billing for that instance. However, these instances continue to count toward any relevant quotas.

Billing continues for high I/O BM instances and dense I/O BM and VM instances that you stop, and related resources continue to apply against any relevant quotas. You must terminate these instances to remove their resources from billing and quotas. See Terminating an Instance.